This invention relates to traffic barricades or markers used, for example, as barriers or barricades on construction sites or roadways during construction to channelize pedestrian or vehicular traffic. Another application for the traffic marker of the present invention is as a floatable buoy for use in marking a selected location on the surface of a body of water.
Various forms of traffic markers have been used to indicate or warn approaching pedestrians or vehicles of holes or other dangerous obstructions. A major objection to hinged at the top foldable markers, made of metal legs and wooden cross bars, is that they represent a solid obstacle in the event that they are hit by a vehicle. Further, hinged type barriers, by virtue of their high center of gravity, are often required to be weighted with stabilizing sand bags laid across their lower cross bars and obscuring the striped or reflective display portions thereon. If the bags are suspended like a pendulum to avoid becoming frozen to the pavement during winter, they divide the legs such that if the barriers are blown over or knocked over by a vehicle the metal legs may project upwardly at acute angles to extensively damage a vehicle. The high center of gravity could cause a hinged barrier to be thrown on the hood of an impacting vehicle causing broken windshields and injury to the occupants.
The present invention provides a traffic marker which is extremely safe to an impacting vehicle in that its structural components include a conventional pneumatic vehicle tire base, a pair of upstanding hollow plastic posts and one or more cross bars in the form of flexible display banners or rails that also serve as structural supports holding the posts in a flexed, readily releasable, upstanding position on the tire. A low center of gravity is attained by the present invention in that the relatively heavy tire base comprises the overwhelming portion of the marker weight while extending vertically less than one-quarter of the total marker height.
The alternative wood base constructiion provides a lower profile base, to further reduce damage to an impacting vehicle, while achieving a broad and stable base.
Another advantage of the present invention is that the structural cross members are in substantially vertical planes such that the display surface thereon reflects the rays from vehicle lights in a manner that they are returned directly to the vehicle. Still another advantage of the instant invention is the marker is not vulnerable to corrosion in that it has no metal parts in certain forms of the invention and minimal metal parts in the remaining embodiments.
A further advantage of the present invention is that reflective pressure sensitive tape displaying warning indicia, such as reflective diagonal stripes, may be used on the structural cross members with the cross members being readily removed or interchanged by one person without the use of any tools to have the stripes slant downwardly to the right or left to direct traffic in the desired direction. As the expensive reflective material is easily damaged, such as in transit, applicant's cross members are easily removed and stored in a protected manner to prevent damage to their reflective surfaces.